Three Listen Reviews from Ivy’s Record Box

I’ve taken some guidance from Wikipedia to get some background of The Incredible String Band and it strikes me that they were from a time now over 50 years ago of which I know very little. However they were “discovered” by someone who saw them play live and signed them. The album I’ve listened to 3 times today is their eponymous debut.

The first thing that struck me before I heard a note were the sleeve notes, I literally laughed out loud. I’ll share 1 paragraph ….

“There are three logs, one for each of the incredible string band, and although they look just like any other logs, they were given to the three musicians by a golden wonder potato, who was a very close friend of the magic blackbird”

There is more of the same and a joyful description of each song by Mike Heron, no lyrics, just a stream of consciousness that already sets the scene for what is to follow. I knew what was coming before the needle hit the record. The one for “Oh Lord How Happy I am” should become a daily poem at all secondary schools in the UK. The front cover seems to include Martin Fry, Ed Sheeran and Noel Gallagher holding a selection of antiques for celebrity “Flog It”

The album opens with “Maybe Someday” which is a lovely ditty in the folk traditions and instantly put me in mind of those guitar lesson programmes in the dead zone of weekday morning TV of the early 70’s. You’re immediately aware that these are talented musicians having a crack at singing in a Bob Dylan style, I have to confess I haven’t checked who came first. As expected there are flutes, I suspect some lutes and other instruments you wouldn’t find in a Coldplay recording session (no-one tell Chris Martin) but in the hands of Heron, Williamson and Palmer (who only gets one song which according to Wiki stretched his belief in the magic blackbird) it creates a really pleasant sound and collection of songs

It’s obvious I can’t judge after 3 listens beyond the honest view that there is enough here for me to give it another go. I’d love a time machine to back to 1966 and get a sense of the vibe of that time that allowed this album to be made. It’s clear all was not well with the world and The Incredible String Bands freeforming hippydom and music was intended to be an antidote to that, A group of celestial travellers takings sounds from the birds and the forest and turning them into songs for all to enjoy. It’s a shame they followed the structure of an album format and could have been even more out there. The writing on the cover is a real find and I genuinely love it.

In summing up, it’s a folky journey back to a more innocent time. Any album that can go from “Footsteps of the Heron” to “Niggertown” is ok with me. 3 obviously talented, creative musicians just being in a time and space that I suspect not many others have inhabited. It’s given me an insight into Johnny C’s world and leaves me with a lovely mental picture of Pencilsqueezer at his easel. brush in hand being inspired by “Smoke Shovelling Song” . All in all a lovely time capsule of an album that I will definitely be trying again

Listen to Peel’s Perfumed Garden, rush out and buy ISB. Spend the next month accosting friends & strangers – “this is Ace”.
If it was released today I would most probably heap scorn & derision on it but thanks for bringing some of that innocent magic back.

Nice work and a brave leap in the dark. If it’s any consolation, this is the first ISB LP and they never sounded more “normal” or mainstream than they do here. Hell, there were even (at least) four cover versions of the Mike Heron-penned song Maybe Someday including one by Alex Harvey and another by prog outfit The Human Beast (the band who featured heavily in the first Danny Baker book).

There were also covers of Everything’s Fine Right Now and October Song, including versions by Davy Graham and Bert Jansch. So, it all ties in.

Clive Palmer left after this album and that’s when the ISB really began to put the acid into acid folk.

By the way, collectability wise, there are several pressings of this album on Elektra.

The very first pressing with white label and green Elektra logo is hugely rare now (around £200+). Orange label pressings sell for maybe £50+ and red labels, less still.

Great review, Dave. I bought this, but it was really 5000 Spirits… and The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter that I got fixated on and played to death. Listening to this again, I’m not sure why that was, except as JC says, it’s a bit more mainstream.

*footnote* I see that 5000 Spirits…was released a month before my 20th birthday, so I was still a teenager.

As I’ve said elsewhere on the blog, In over 50 years of record buying I’ve only ever bought 2 LPs on the strength of their cover design alone (ironic charity shop purchases don’t count. I’m talking about full price records).

One was The Zappa/Mothers – Freak Out and the other was the ISB -5,000 Spirits, both in 1967. I knew nothing about either band or their music at the time, but I had a hunch that if the cover was this good, the music might be too.

Both turned out to be wise, if not life-affirming, purchases.

And speaking of cover versions, First Girl I Loved from 5,000 Spirits is possibly the most covered ISB song of all with versions by:
Judy Collins, Jackson Browne, Wizz Jones and the Rosie hitmaker Don Partridge.
Plus many more versions by more obscure artists.

I love that about music. How you can borrow and steal and yet end up with something completely new. I posted a link in one of the recent Bowie threads where Carlos Alomar lovingly demonstrated to us what he said to David that golden years in the format he had it at the time was pretty much the melody to on Broadway. It’s amazing what can be achieved once you have realized plagiarism . LOL

The year after 5000 Spirits I bought The Fool’s eponymous LP on the vague assumption that because they’d done the cover art for one of my favourite albums it would be good. I was wrong of course…wouldn’t even be worth much if I still had it.

I must apologise, the clip above is not the original version from the 5000 Spirits, Or The Layers Of The Onion album as stated, but in fact an early demo later released on the Chelsea Sessions album. I didn’t listen to it before posting and was fooled because they used the 5000 Spirits cover art.

This is the correct version. You’ll notice there’s a sitar and Danny Thompson’s upright bass here which is not on the earlier version.

It was right after his seven part review of the darkened room, where he proclaimed to to be “bloody weird” and that he “couldn’t see what all the fuss was about this darkness business, anyway” that he disappeared from sight.

I understand the darkened room had already, by then, submitted an extensive and somewhat perplexed review of PaulWaringmeister on a blog run for the darkened rooms community. It’s similar to the London taxi driver community: ‘You’ll never guess who I had in me cab/darkened environment the other day… Gor blimey, mate, these blaahdy record reviewers…’ etc etc

Oi! I remain deeply scarred by my foray into the world of the ISB. Only now am I beginning to regain a degree of balance in my auditory faculties, through almost constant immersion in the recorded works of Half Man Half Biscuit. Who, by the way, continue to make folk music of the highest order.

If you’re going to talk about me I might have to come back and bore you rigid once more with talk of obscure Liverpool indie bands and suchlike. So think on.

In a parallel universe, there is a version of Ragnarok where a giant PaulWaringmesister is locked in endless combat with the massed forces of the Mahavishnu Orchestra on the jazz-rocky slopes of the mountains of Valhalla, shouting ‘YOU SHALL NOT PASSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!’ – as Odin, Thor and the boys look on and say to each other, ‘Lads, I’m not sure this is in the script…’

The Bangla Desh box has its moments, but Clapton was strung out on heroin and put in a lacklustre performance.

I’ve told the story here before about asking George to sign the book from the Bangla Desh box at a 1981 photo shoot. He got very excited about the pictures of Eric playing a beautiful Gibson Byrdland and insisted on showing it to everyone who was there.

Dylan’s set was excellent (with half The Beatles backing him), good to great George Harrison albums : ATMP (of course), 33 1/3, George Harrison, Cloud 9 and Brainwashed. and there are other gems all over the place, a very decent solo career.

Rather than start a new thread, I thought I would resurrect this one to make it known that I am thirty-one years old and I have just listened to the Incredible String Band for the very first time. It wasn’t as scary as I feared.

I listened to ‘The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter’ and here is my very brief review:

There was a song early on which is basically the inspiration for ‘The Lumberjack Song’. That was alright. I enjoyed the appearance of Sweep on backing vocals during ‘A Cellular Song’, the one with Bob Dylan style harmonica was pretty good and it wouldn’t surprise me if the Water Song genuinely features a sound-recording of somebody having a bath. I am not sure how to react to ‘Swift as the Wind’ as it seems they recorded it during a medical examination – ‘Open your mouth and say ‘Aaah’.